Since 2020, the pace of natural gas trade between China and Russia has accelerated significantly. Particularly, the three energy documents signed this year directly increased the maximum pipeline natural gas (PNG) trade volume between the two countries to 106 billion cubic meters.
China and Russia signed three energy documents in September 2025, including increasing the annual gas transmission volume of China-Russia East-route Natural Gas Pipeline (Pipeline 1) to 44 billion cubic meters, expanding the China-Far East Gas Pipeline's capacity from 10 billion cubic meters to 12 billion cubic meters, and initiating the much-anticipated memorandum for Power of Siberia 2 Gas Pipeline.
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The reason for this lies in the fact that after the Russia-Ukraine conflict, especially since this year, Russia has completely cut off PNG supplies to Europe, leaving a vast amount of Russian natural gas resources in urgent need of markets. Redirecting these supplies to China has become the optimal solution, prompting Russia to actively promote PNG trade with China.
In addition to PNG, LNG trade between China and Russia also achieved breakthroughs in 2025. Beyond the regular trade from the Sakhalin and Yamal ports, in late August 2025, the Russian shadow fleet LNG carrier "Mulan", departing from the Arctic-2 export terminal, successfully arrived at PipeChina Beihai receiving terminal. This marked the first direct import of LNG resources from Arctic-2 to China since the imposition of sanctions on Russia.
According to the General Administration of Customs of China (GACC), from January to September 2025, China imported 4.99 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia, accounting for 10.52 per cent of its total LNG imports. PNG imports from Russia reached 21.234 million tonnes, making up 46.73 per cent of China's total. From the perspective of total natural gas imports from Russia, the figure read 262.3 billion cubic meters during the first nine months of 2025, representing 28.24 per cent of China's total natural gas imports. This solidifies Russia's position as China's largest source of natural gas imports, reflecting the deepening natural gas trade between the two countries.
With the gradual fulfilment of PNG contracts between China and Russia and the actively advancing Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline's Line D, OilChem estimates China's PNG imports to reach 115 billion cubic meters by 2030, representing a cumulative increase of 37.40 per cent compared to 2025.
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